#first-year aoki kinda looks like subaru lol

[enbyboiwonder]

I found the Dec 2018 issue of Cocohana, which I had thought would have the 3rd or 4th chapter of the 2.43 manga, but it has the 5th, so is the September 2018 issue, whose cover art is from 2.43, not the first, then? The cover for this issue is from a new serialization, and though this is my first manga magazine, I sorta thought that was how it worked. Well, I suppose I’ll find out if I ever find a copy of that one

Also, this says that 2.43 will be continued in the Feb 2019 issue, so if this one really is the last chapter, it wasn’t planned to be…

And of course it doesn’t say what issue it continued from. 4 I know was in the Nov issue since I saw it mentioned on the cover, but if 1 isn’t Sept, then it could be either Jul or Aug and it doesn’t seem all series contained within are listed on the cover…

[enbyboiwonder]

WIP ask: 2.43 chika alien, odaoki 結婚 and odaoki yeonga? (all or one of them)

Send me the name of a WIP (or multiple) you wanna hear more about!

chika - alien

This one, I don't have a concrete idea for, but I was thinking about Alien by Thriving Ivory and Wishlist by Pearl Jam (particularly the line "I wish I was an alien, at home behind the sun") and how they're ND/autistic moods (Alien, in fact, was written as an exchange between the songwriter and his little brother, who's autistic and was fixing to head off to college at the time), and I wanted to write something inspired by them for Chika a.k.a. my favorite autistic.

Currently, I'm thinking of naming it Haven't the Light to Hold to See after a line from Alien, and beginning it with the Wishlist line I quoted above and ending it with the Alien line Oh alien, you'll be just fine, fine, yeah. It's either gonna be yunichika or aochika, but since I have no actual idea what it's gonna be about, I dunno which one I'm leaning more toward!! (Although maybe slightly more toward aochika just because Aoki and also I haven't finished anything for them yet…)

And the other two under a cut:

odaoki 結婚

This one's based off of the story of the same name from Lingo Mastery's Japanese Short Stories for Beginners. It's a future/different-first-meeting AU wherein Oda and Aoki meet sitting next to each other on a plane to Hokkaidō, Oda to attend his mother's wedding (she'd moved to Hokkaidō years ago after her divorce from his father, which is where she'd met her fiancé), and Aoki returning to visit his parents like he's been meaning to but hadn't been able to get off work for (they'd lived in Fukui up until he was in middle school, when one of his parents got a job transfer to Hokkaidō). They hit it off and decide to meet up for a date if they both have a time they're free while they're there!

Also the good thing about this AU is they don’t have to hide their interest in one another. Oda already knows he likes men, and Aoki doesn’t relegate himself to loving him from afar. Of course, we also don’t get that devotion between them, but that comes later. Aoki’s openly disbelieving when he learns that Oda’s single, and Oda’s flattered, yup, definitely no hiding their interest lol

odaoki yeonga

This started because I was listening to 연가 (yeonga | love song) by 신용우 (Shin Yongwoo), the VA of Han Jumin from Mystic Messenger, and I thought his voice sounded similar enough to Umeyan's that I could almost imagine that it was Aoki singing.

Uh so I don't even know if the premise makes sense since I was just kinda writing whatever, but it's set during college and Oda's visiting Aoki but Aoki's unexpectedly busy with an assignment (this had been a free day when they'd planned to meet), so Oda's waiting while Aoki's finishing up, and Aoki sings part of this song under his breath without realizing it until Oda goes, "Is that… Korean?" This is also the genesis of my headcanon that Aoki's multilingual; he takes Korean in college (and has been listening to Korean-language music to help familiarize himself with the language) and continues learning English on his own. Oda calls him "an overachiever, as always," and the subject kinda turns toward future plans and also how Oda still doesn't know what he's gonna do after volleyball, while he feels like Aoki has everything together.

And then it gets even more self-indulgent (I was also thinking about how Oda's dream of becoming a super ace wasn't actually as unfounded as Aoki thought it was because Subaru basically already was everything Oda wanted to be in middle school and was only a little taller than him back then, and Aoki never did learn about that, did he?) and gets into Oda looking up to Subaru in middle school and how Subaru was like Haikyuu's Hinata then because I was thinking about that, too. Shorter than almost everyone and having to jump higher than everyone else? How it's less the height of the jumps itself and more how fast he can get there? (Oda can jump that high too, and yet it's not as impressive and he has less of a fighting chance because he's, well, calling him "average" doesn't exactly feel right, but in terms of natural ability, he is, and hard work can only get you so far, especially when your opponent has both hard work and a greater natural ability.) Ayup, there are definitely parallels between those two, too.

Anyway so it also ended up with Oda having had a crush on Subaru back then, which, I think, is probably the only way I'll ever be able to write mimuoda: one or the other had an admiration-based crush that never went anywhere. (I added them to the list of possible ships for the 22 kiss prompts since I don't mind them, but I just?? can't imagine it?? And I already have something for "a kiss that was never given," so I can't do that. But I digress.) So then we get this exchange:

“You almost sound like you had a crush on him.” Shin shrugs, not meeting his eyes, a light pink starting to color his cheeks. "Well, it was a long time ago." Huh. It was half supposed to be a joke, but he hadn't expected it to be true. Does that mean— No, that’s the last thing he should be thinking about, he tells himself and quashes down that small flame of hope before it can flare up. Shin huffs out a laugh, just a little too breathy to be genuine.  “It was a joke,” he says, an edge of stiffness to his smile, the line of his shoulders.  “C’mon, don’t tell me you’re gonna think of me any different now.” And, shit, this isn’t what he wanted.  Misao hesitates for just a moment before reaching across the empty space between them to rest his hand on Shin’s knee.  “It’d be fine even if it wasn’t,” he says.

And that's really all I have for it. It's preslash, and I'm hoping it'll have the feeling that it's moving in that direction of them getting together somewhere down the line. A lot of times I don't much care if it feels like it's going anywhere or not, but this one I definitely do.